Developing Sustainable Local Food Sales to a College Institutional Market

We helped DDS build those relationships with farmers by: having farmers on the task force, touring farmers at DDS—and DDS at farms, interviewing 5 dozen farmers to screen for capacity, conducting tasting events around campus for students, helping DDS establish an annual freshmen orientation week local foods dinner, helping DDS increase their local foods purchasing from wholesalers, setting up annual meetings with individual participating farmers for direct sale, giving buyers printed contact info for farmers, overseeing creation of a logo and point-of-purchase marketing materials, tracking as best as we were able DDS’s purchases of VT/NH farm products during the life of the project for comparison purposes, attempting to get Dartmouth’s $2 million insurance requirement lowered for farmers, and involving everyone we could from campus life in the excitement of the project, as we were able given our “outsider” status on campus.

Here are some details about what we tried, what worked, and what didn’t.

TASK FORCE COORDINATION
The task force was made up of a wide range of participants to bring all perspectives to the table. Members included:

Carmen Allen Dartmouth Dining Service, Executive Chef
Nancy Allen Natural Resource Conservation Service
Bill Baker William H. Baker & Sons
John Bellavance Upper Valley Produce
Mark Curran Black River Produce
Beth DiFrancesco Dartmouth Dining Service, Purchasing Manager
Nancy Franklin Riverview Farm
Steve Fulton Blue Ox Farm
David Newlove Dartmouth Dining Service, Associate Director
Tucker Rossiter Dartmouth Dining Service, Director
Jim Ryan Woodchuck Hollow Farm
Scott Stokoe Dartmouth Organic Farm/ Dartmouth ENVS
Ross Virginia Dartmouth Environmental Studies Program (ENVS)
Lisa Johnson Vital Communities staff

Also, the following students served in various capacities supporting the task force, mostly as work-study interns for Vital Communities: Ashley Hetrick, Mark Hoipkemier, Anna Guenther, Dan Bailin, Douglas Hannah, Brooking Gatewood, Sarah Hackney, Norah Lake, Lissa Goldstein, Erin Flynn, Nicolas Garcia, Nick Williams, Ryan Berger, Josh Proper, Lindsey Larson.

The task force met nine times over the first seven months, and by the end of the project agreed it was best to meet a couple of times a year and instead get together mostly in productive small groups working on specific tasks. It was a challenging group to facilitate, for obvious reasons. If it were easy to get faculty, dining staff, farmers, wholesalers, and students together to have immediately productive conversations, it would have been done long ago. With everyone’s busy schedules, it was hard to find time necessary to build relationships.

Farmer participants judged (by about 2-to-1) the task force to be effective at its three tasks: building working relationships between project stakeholders [3-yes and 5-no], providing educational content to help task force members clearly understand the needs and capabilities of all members of this food delivery system [6-yes and 2-no], and strategizing the best ways to introduce new VT & NH farm products to DDS [6-yes and 2-no]. BUT, only two of those farmers were actually on the task force, and those two split exactly down the middle, one saying it was effective at one aspect but not the two others, and the other farmer saying exactly the opposite.

Further farmer comments included:
• Task force meetings tended to focus on DDS issues and relationships. It might have been better to have separate meeting with DDS to work on implementing the Task Force directives. The Task force should have been used to create an action plan for the project, meet early and often and then just provide oversight, later. Often time, the Task Force meetings provided information that could have been sent to task force members via e-mail. There didn't always seem to be a reason to meet, such as making decisions, providing input, etc.
• There was no "institutional" partner on the Task Force. This would be representative of the higher administration that could be making institutional commitments, inputs and received information. I don't think that the Dining Services adequately represent the administration of the college. It is my understanding that the Provost was, technically, the institutional partner. I think it would have been much more effective to have the institutional commitment by having a Provost representative at the Task Force meetings. DDS was the implementer of the new "policies" but it is NOT the "power source" to make the institutional decisions to fully incorporate this program into the institution. It seemed like it was left to DDS and VF&F to work it out....or not.
• “Farms are dynamic businesses, the crops are perishable, and many things are not under control. We need more action and fewer meetings.”

The two non-farmer task force members who completed the final survey reported that all three aspects of the task force were effective. However, one of those also commented that, “it was an awful lot of "meeting" time, and talking and maybe in the beginning, say the first 6 months, just talk and really not settling on anything.” Five additional non-farmers completed the survey and were unanimous in their opinion: the task force was effective at providing educational content and strategizing the best ways to introduce new products, but was not effective at building working relationships between project stakeholders.

As the outsider and facilitator, I found it stressful to take in everyone’s perspective, translate when necessary, help all of us keep an open mind, and mediate long-standing differences of opinion. I found that many times I and others would be automatically operating on our own assumptions and biases which were often false and/or problematic. In the end I feel it was worth it, and learned a lot about how to do it better in the future. For instance, I wish we had planned more hands-on time, as talking around a table can be a frustrating way for busy people to build difficult relationships.

Student interns were hot and cold. In some cases the students were personally committed to the topic and gave their all for months or years. In some cases personal limitations made it impossible for students to focus on the work. Commonly students either really loved this project or were quite distant. In all cases their campus life was a benefit. One morning in the shower it occurred to me that, of all the impact we believe we are having as a nonprofit in this region, for all I know perhaps our work with Dartmouth College work-study interns will have the most far-reaching impact, as they go out into their new worlds armed with months of immersion in our community-based strategies and a new experience at connecting with farmers.

FARMER TOURS OF DDS
Eight farmers from seven farms attended one of two days of tours around DDS facilities. This was essential in getting farmers clear on their potential customer’s needs. There was also some back and forth about products during the visits. It was important to us that DDS be the first site for tours, rather than farms, because we wanted to avoid any tendency toward participants taking an attitude of, “Dartmouth simply should buy local and organic—they have so much money!” which, of course, doesn’t apply to dining services. This way everyone got to see firsthand how hard everyone works there and the facilities they have to work with.

TASK FORCE TOURS OF FARMS
Much of the task force spent half a day touring Riverview Farm and MacNamara Farm, two nearby farms in Plainfield NH, where folks heard and saw realities for the farmers.

TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE
Technical assistance took more forms for this project than we originally expected.

The entire Task Force experience, though frustrating at many points for those involved, was designed to allow for frequent and multi-layered sharing of perspectives, in effect mutual education. For instance, students saw parts of DDS they had never experienced. Farmers got to explain to buyers why their beef is over $5/pound and explore together the challenges of getting local milk into glass bottles specially made with a co-brand of the farm and Dartmouth College. We brought in buyers from the Hanover Co-op who are expert at selecting local producers’ products that work, and who annually hold a wintertime produce planning meeting to minimize growers’ competition with each other. As a group we drove to Middlebury College to absorb their experience and wisdom on buying local foods—it was comforting in a way to see that even a college with such a strong reputation for local did not in fact that day have anything on the menu from a local farm except fluid milk; it was also helpful to hear that they also do not receive financial support from the college proper to get local foods in but do it exclusively on the passion of the dining management. At Task Force meetings we analyzed individual food groups: dairy, produce, poultry, meat, and other. We met with the managers of each individual dining hall to explore the possibilities. Quickly everyone saw that this was not going to be a simple project. For instance, Pavilion is the campus’s kosher and halal dining option. We were initially excited to hear that they cannot take in pre-washed/bagged vegetables because of their kosher/halal status, but instead need complete cases of unprocessed veggies. Great! But… our hearts sank as we learned that that dining hall is entirely closed during the summer session, the very time our local farmers could produce fabulous cases of lettuces etc. And because the fall session doesn’t start til the end of September, most fall produce is equally out of the question.

We also engaged Allan Matthews from UVM Center for Sustainable Agriculture to talk with some poultry/meat producers in the last year of the project, and this is his report:

Dartmouth Dining Service - Technical Assistance for farms
As part of the evaluation of impacts and opportunities for farms supplying meats to this NE SARE project, Hardwick Beef and Misty Knoll poultry farms were interviewed. Five key aspects that need to be considered include:
• The opportunity for consistent orders from local farms over time.
• Expectations concerning student (consumer) interest and demand for the local farm products
• Distribution and product delivery issues.
• Cost and quality issues which return a profit to involved farms.
• Need of the farmers to sell cuts from the whole animal.

Hardwick Beef
According to Ridge Shinn and Michael Gourlay of Hardwick Beef, the introduction of their grass-fed beef products through this SARE project has been a rewarding experience, and they expect the opportunity to continue after the end of the SARE project.
Initially, ordering procedures and product costs seemed to present a problem. Dartmouth originally felt that the hamburger being provided was at too high a cost per unit to make it feasible to purchase local hamburger through Hardwick. Early on in the project, Hardwick held a tasting demonstration on campus, and the student response was overwhelmingly positive. Hamburgers were prepared using Hardwick Beef, and 87 out of 91 students surveyed noted that they would definitely pay a higher price to have locally raised, grass-fed burgers on campus.
Dartmouth ordered 20: to 30# of Hardwick hamburger as a start. It was delivered as fresh (not frozen) in 5 # bulk packages. Black River produce picks the cases of hamburger up directly from the slaughterhouse used by Hardwick. This was convenient, in that Hardwick had full sides of beef that could be loaded on the same truck because they also had sides of beef going into Hanover/ Lebanon Co-op near Dartmouth.
Dartmouth’s orders eventually stabilized at 60# of hamburger per week @ $4.45 per pound, with a standing invoice total of $267 per week. Initially, this worked well for both parties in that Hardwick needed an additional market for their hamburger, as they were selling all their prime cuts directly to other customers. According to Hardwick, they are currently not making much profit at the limited amount being purchased, because of the packaging and shipping costs involved. A Hardwick steer yields 70# to 80# of hamburger per side, or approximately 150 # per animal. It would be a better arrangement for Hardwick if Dartmouth could move their consistent purchases up to 150# per week, for a standing order of $667.50. This would allow them too process a full steer, and to market the prime cuts from an additional steer, Hardwick is in the business to sell the whole beef, prime cuts plus hamburger, in order to make their profit margins.

Hardwick Bottlenecks
It seemed as just as the product ordering had been worked out, that the College broke for summer, and orders stopped. The college also closed for holidays, and made no orders then, which had not been anticipated. Initially, this was a difficult adjustment since the farmers were dealing with fresh vs. frozen burger. But both sides were able to adjust quickly.
Another bottleneck was in Dartmouth’s response and expectations to “lean” graded hamburger. Because their beef is grass –fed, Hardwick’s standard was 85%/15%, with a range between 82% and 87%. Grass –fed beef is high in omega 3’s, yet a great deal of flavor is added in the fat for taste. Dartmouth chefs needed to adjust their expectations to accept the Hardwick hamburger, rather than expecting the (90%/10% ratio they had been used to from conventional hamburger rated as lean.
A third bottleneck was in the distribution arrangement and the transportation mileage involved in the trucks running from Brandon, VT to the slaughterhouse in Benson, VT and then deliveries to Dartmouth. Since Hardwick already deals with Black River Produce, picking up 5 to 6 Hardwick orders on Tuesdays in Benson, it was easy enough to arrange to have the Dartmouth order added to the trucks already traveling those routes to deliver at Hanover and Lebanon, NH Co-ops.

Misty Knoll Chicken
According to Rob Litch of Misty Knoll Farms, the introduction of their poultry products through this SARE project has been a frustrating experience to both parties, but still a rewarding experience. If Dartmouth can move to a standardized weekly or monthly order, so that Misty Knoll can plan on consistent sales, he expects the deliveries to continue into the future.
Initially, ordering procedures and product costs seemed to present a problem. Most sales orders for Misty Knoll products were placed through Black River Produce as the distributor, since Black River already serviced Misty Knoll accounts.
Misty Knoll’s business relies on the consistency of their quality poultry as well as consistent orders from customers. Misty Knoll processes 4,000 chickens per week and 40,000 turkeys for the holidays. Their standing orders and deliveries from regular customers are essential.
To Misty Knoll, Dartmouth’s orders were sporadic, and often ordered only breasts, when they needed to sell the whole birds. Early on in the project, Misty Knoll made arrangements for sales through Black River. The lack of direct communication between Dartmouth and Misty Knoll added to the difficulties in meeting the orders for “1,000 breasts”, when Misty Knoll already had standing orders for their poultry. It was hard to respond quickly to a special need to meet a Dartmouth order.
It was even difficult for Misty Knoll’s owner to document how many sales he made to Dartmouth during the project, since deliveries and orders were handled through Black River, rather than pre-ordering directly from Misty Knoll. It was more convenient for Dartmouth to order from Black River, in that they had ordered other local products that could be loaded on the same truck.
Dartmouth’s orders never seemed to stabilize for Misty Knoll. According to Rob Litch, if Dartmouth could estimate a standing order, he would be pleased to place Dartmouth in the mix of sales from their 4,000 chickens per week. Without a standing order, it will continue to meet sporadic interest and/or demand for local chickens from this farm. [end of Allen Matthews report]

SIGMA NU TASTING
In August of 2004 our interns set up a tasting event at Sigma Nu fraternity, sampling roasted corn, yellow watermelon, and salsa they made fresh. Foods came from two farms. Students there, captured on videotape, commented:
• “NH versus California… I just don’t see it that much…” [to which a student intern replied with a comprehensive explanation of hidden agricultural costs]
• “I think, even if it costs more, students will still pay.”
• “If you explain to me why, I’d probably be supportive of it.”
• “I find that with the Dartmouth plan, if it costs X amount, it costs X amount, but students are happy when there’s better food.”
• “As long as it doesn’t cost too much more.”
• “We don’t really think about it, but if [there was a sign that said] like, ‘free-range’, or whatever, you’d notice.”
• “I support any effort to bring this into the cafeteria.”
Striking about this sampling was the length of time students engaged in conversation. Our interns (all Environmental Studies students) worked hard to put it together, and shared a lot of perspectives with this group of students they had chosen specifically because they weren’t ENVS students and would be unlikely to know about global agricultural issues.

A TASTE OF THE UPPER VALLEY, FRESHMAN LOCAL FOODS DINNER
DDS established “A Taste of the Upper Valley”, a dinner featuring VT/NH farm products. Held during Orientation Week for new students, after three annual meals this has become a regular event. Especially popular were the in-season Riverview apples at the exit door to take home. Students were seen leaving with pocketsful to enjoy later.

INSTITUTIONAL BUYERS’ GUIDE
We updated the draft Institutional Buyers’ Guide repeatedly and emailed it out to the DDS buyers. We will also offer it on our website in its most current updated form. Our intention is to have all experienced wholesale farmers and producers listed in it. Separately, but because of this project’s ongoing need, we modified our searchable website data base that we make available to the general public. Our Valley Food & Farm Guide is both a printed publication and a searchable website where one can find farmers growing specific crops—we added an intake question this year asking farmers to identify themselves if they provide wholesale products. Now we are working on the new search feature that will allow anyone to find those farmers. We will find a way to tie this in with the Institutional Buyers’ Guide we produced for this project.

FARM TO DARTMOUTH LOGO
We have a finalized “Farm to Dartmouth” logo, created by past intern and Dartmouth alumnus Sarah Hackney ’06. With it we created shelf talkers and other signs that DDS managers can use to promote their VT & NH sourced farm products. Throughout 2006 and 2007 there were signs up to promote all the products regularly available. Sarah also designed for us 2’ x 3’ posters that effectively got the message out about the Farm to Dartmouth project, and DDS had facilities workers hang one outside each of the main dining halls. We did not find ways to get the logo up electronically on website menus and up on signs when the farm products are one ingredient in a recipe. DDS’s managers reported when asked, “On the whole, students notice them and their purchasing is somewhat influenced by them.”

CORN HUSKING PARTY
Phi Tau, a campus Greek house, held a corn husking contest on its front lawn, inviting students to race for the title of chief corn husker. They provided a selection of flavorings for the cooked corn after the excitement of the contest. About two-three dozen participants enjoyed the warm afternoon and delicious corn.

BBQ DAY
During the summer of 2006 Collis Café held a BBQ Day on its outdoor porch. They grilled 4 and 6 oz beef burgers and 6 oz Italian sausage patties from PT Farms in North Haverhill, NH. When asked about their preferences, one couple stated that they had never purchased any meat from the grill before, as it seemed unappealing to them; however, when they saw that it was from a local farm, they figured that it would be high-quality meat, and they subsequently enjoyed their first burger on campus.

Roasted Vermont corn on the cob was popular, and a wrap made with all local farms’ produce. Cabot Cheese sent two boxes of cheddar for the burgers as well as two boxes of the .75 oz samples to give away. Dartmouth Progressives had some free Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream as well as info about sustainability and local foods. Edgewater Farm cut up and distributed yellow watermelons, which were surprising new items for many students. Collis reported receiving a lot of positive comments from students for this lunch.

It was planned for a Thursday, so Scott Stokoe, the manager of Dartmouth’s Organic Farm, and some student interns were running the weekly farmstand as well, in the space adjacent to the BBQ.

FALL FESTIVUS
On November 30, Dartmouth held a local foods “Fall Festivus” from 11am-2pm at Collis Café, a dining hall popular with students who seek out vegetarian, vegan, organic, natural, and wholesome meals.

The lunch menu featured several local farm items: elk sausages, beef burgers, apple teabreads, butternut squash spice cake, butternut squash bisque and a five-vegetable curry. There was also free ice cream, pumpkin pie and mulled cider. More than two hundred Dartmouth students, staff and faculty attended, as well as several community members. The elk sausages were especially popular, and ran out within an hour. The Collis Café dining area was decorated with lights, informational posters, informational brochures, and linens on the tables. Students enjoyed speaking with Donn Cann, the elk farmer who produced the sausages. Vital Communities intern Mark Hopkeimer provided information about Upper Valley foods, and Sustainability office intern Emily Jones signed up 44 students to the Dartmouth Sustainability initiative. The students who signed up for the initiative will use re-usable containers and cloth napkins. Feedback was largely positive; students particularly enjoyed the tasty pumpkin pie and the elk sausages.

Vermont Mystic Pie provided pie shells and Farmers Diner prepared the pies, and we went through three gallons of Strafford Organic Creamery ice cream. Walhowden Farm provided 7 gallons of apple cider. The Fall Festivus was sponsored by the Dartmouth Programming Board and two student groups, the Progressives and Sustainable Dartmouth.
75 students completed surveys which asked how much more money they would be willing to pay for local foods. It has not yet been seriously pursued to increase the cost of dining at Dartmouth. However, if everyone increased their account by $30 per term, at 2500 students, that could increase DDS revenue by $75,000 per term. Even half of that would go a significant way toward sustainably paying for local farm products, and equipment and training needs to implement them fully. However, I have no expectation that DDS will consider recommending such an increase.

ADMINISTRATORS’ LOCAL FOODS LUNCHEON
In March 2005 College Provost Barry Scherr welcomed 2 dozen administrators to an all-local foods luncheon. Eleven farmers’ products were included on the menu, from 500 Farms beef and Misty Knoll chicken to roasted root vegetables, to a cheese tray, to ice cream. The Provost introduced the project and we engaged administrators in a discussion about how and why this project can have an effect on campus life.

FLAVORS OF THE VALLEY
Although Purchasing Manager Beth DiFrancesco had previously attended Valley Food & Farm’s annual meet-the-farmer expo, Flavors of the Valley, in May 2005 several additional buyers attended to meet producers and now continue to attend annually.

F2D BLITZ BULLETIN
Student interns established with faculty support a project e-bulletin with local foods updates and info about tastings and new products. However, this had a very hard time getting off the ground and while it still has potential never reached a regular, effective status.

INSURANCE COSTS
Dartmouth College in 2006 waived their standard $2 million insurance requirement for small produce farmers, though the Risk Management office wasn’t at the time willing to put it in writing. DDS staff asked Hanover Coop if their suppliers were required to have $2 million insurance, and they replied that only electricians and other service providers were, and that seemed to be enough for the person in charge at the time. However, Risk Management has had some staff turnover and it is yet to be a formalized policy. Walhowden Farm is able to be a direct supplier because of the waiving of this additional insurance need. At least one other additional farm could participate if this barrier were lifted.

DEVELOPING PURCHASING DATA
“The business of being involved in a grant and having to be involved in data collection and reporting is really more cumbersome and time consuming that I would have wanted to be involved in had I had the choice,” commented a DDS participant.

Collecting and refining this purchasing data has been one of the most difficult pieces of the project. It is easy to see why almost no one else tracks their local farm purchases. While we had a part-time intern dedicated to collection and analysis, and DDS staff have been as helpful as they can be, the system is against us. For example, if a farmer sells directly to DDS, all that is needed is to track their year’s accounts payable. However, for anything coming through a distributor of any kind, there is a lot of sorting to do—no business anywhere tracks the state where the farm product originated from, on an invoice.

So, here is the write-up our intern put together on the collection process:

Dartmouth’s food service system is very complex, with 7 separate dining halls making independent purchasing decisions and sourcing food from a variety of distributors and farmers. Data tracking began by cultivating relationships with each of the dining hall managers, and clearly defining what will be considered a “Farm to Dartmouth” product for the purposes of this project. This definition is:

Vermont and New Hampshire agriculture products that have significant amounts of the final product grown within either state

Not products produced or assembled in Vermont or New Hampshire if the agriculture products were grown out of state

Each dining hall manager took student interns on a walk through of the sales floor and prep kitchens, highlighting any products they thought might qualify for Farm to Dartmouth. Students took note of these products. They also took production information down for other packaged products (yogurt, milk, pre-made foods, etc) to contact the companies to determine if they used VT/NH ingredients. Interns then asked for a complete list of suppliers from each dining hall manager, as well as the products they supplied. This information was readily available through the college’s computerized purchasing system. Interns researched products and called producing companies to determine if the products contained significant quantities of NH/VT agriculture products.

In the case of produce distributors in the local area, with the permission of the Dartmouth administration, students called the company owners to determine what percentage of their products were sourced from NH/VT farms. Dartmouth obtains produce from two main distributors, Black River Produce and Upper Valley Produce.

Black River Produce has a computerized inventory system, and they were able to quickly and easily determine the exact monetary value of local products sold to Dartmouth College in the past 3 years. Note: “local” at BRP, though, includes products from any farms they pick up from, in VT, NH and MA. Upper Valley Produce has an entirely paper inventory system, and lacks records of purchases for Dartmouth College. Through discussions with the owner of Upper Valley Produce, interns were able to determine that the distributor only sources significant quantities of VT/NH produce in the month of August. Interns were able to obtain the invoices for the month of August directly from the college, and by reviewing them with the owner of Upper Valley Produce, they were able to determine approximate monetary values for purchases in this month for all three years. This was a very labor intensive task on the part of the interns, as they needed to photo copy every invoice to take to Upper Valley Produce for review.

For large national distributors (Roma and Sysco), the dining hall managers were able to contact them directly and obtain detailed records of their purchases over the last 3 years. They were able to provide this information upon request. Dining hall managers were able to specify what products they would like to include in these reports, which saved the interns time in sorting through the files trying to find relevant products.

Larger farms that delivered directly to the college were able to provide total sales to Dartmouth for each year. These numbers could also be obtained by contacting the accounts payable office and obtaining information on the total amount spent with each farm.

During the project, Vital Communities paid for several tasting events for which they were subsequently reimbursed. One time suppliers such as this should be watched for, and if questioned carefully, the dining hall managers should be able to provide information on any suppliers such as this.

While it is challenging enough to gather all the numbers for established accounts, the trick is making sure to include the new farm accounts—or the success achieved in bringing them on board is not counted in the purchase amounts. It’s always harder to remember someone who is missing from the list.

MARKETING—PROMOTING PURCHASING DATA

We refined the data gathering to have year-by-year numbers and a process for Dartmouth to continue collecting the information, so that after the project is over they could continue to monitor and promote their successes, but the truth is, it is way too much work for DDS to add to their responsibilities. Our intern Ashley Hetrick ’07 was the dedicated data gatherer. It took three years to find, collect, organize and analyze the data. This is not because of any weakness on her part or on the part of DDS, who provided the raw data. It is because it is excruciatingly slow and tedious to truly put together these numbers. Now, Mark Curran at Black River Produce is seriously working toward a plan to improve this situation for BRP purchases, but that isn’t going to help DDS with purchases from Roma, Sysco, and Upper Valley Produce. There are no numbers for 2007 because, frankly, Ashley graduated and there was no way we could ask DDS to let someone else paw through their files again and drag them through a repetition of all the subsequent questions. Unless Community Relations, who has a good reason to want to be able to promote these increases, can find funding for staffing to continue collecting this data, it will not be tracked into the future.

The data gathered for 2004-2006 did tell us that DDS purchased an additional $30,000 of VT & NH products in 2006 over the 2004 year. And that, despite a decrease of over $17,000 in the dairy column (all other categories—produce, meat, poultry, and other—were increases). Produce increased the most, going from $27 in 2004 to over $24,000 in 2006. Next came “other”, which increased over $15,000 in purchases of mostly eggs, plus maple syrup. Local meat, which tallied at zero in 2004, also increased substantially—over $7,000—almost exclusively in buffalo .

We promoted this $30,000 number, and our having met the goal of 10 new accounts, in a press release generated by Dartmouth’s Public Affairs office just before the May 2007 Expo, which was designed to be our major release party for the press. This press release did get some modest coverage. Given the exposure the project got when it was launched, though [see AP article from Aug 2004], I was surprised to not get at least that much notice when we achieved our goal. Several factors may be at work here. Back in 2004, college local foods projects were pretty sexy business. It may be that given the plethora of farm to college projects out there, achieving something in 2007 was only “dog bites man” news (although most of us doing this work seriously question most claims—“irrational exuberance” is how I’ve heard one farmer describe his relationship with another college). It may also be that $30,000 doesn’t sound like much in today’s world. If only folks knew what it took to increase an institution’s local foods purchases by the first $30,000! Of course, the second $30,000 wouldn’t be nearly as difficult to achieve.

It is also difficult to measure how many farms these increases impacted. When it is a single farm delivering only its own product, everything is relatively simple. However, that’s not necessarily the best method for all farmers and for institutions. Black River and Upper Valley Produce are key players in the success of this project—when they deliver carrots all winter, some of which are Deep Root for example, how many farms should we tally as being affected by this project? When DDS buys Stonyfield yogurt, how many dairy farms should we count? Should we count any at all since Stonyfield is also buying milk from other states and other countries? Similarly, how do we treat Garelick Milk, whose representatives say there are 195 NH & VT farms supplying them, but can’t tell us how many other farmers are supplying them outside our two states (is it 100 or 1000)? Cold Hollow Cider claims that 60% of its apples come from VT farms and 40% from NY farms; Cabot cheese says 39% of their milk comes from VT & NH farms and the rest from NY, and much of it is processed in MA; and Highland Sugarworks says that the syrup it provides the Topside store is all from Vermont sugarbushes—in these cases how many farmers do we say are affected, and do we include them at all when some/most comes from out of the two states? Even Yankee Farmers Market, who raises buffalo, also sells buffalo stock to other area farmers who then provide product back to them under their label. This is not a simple business to track.

FARM TO DARTMOUTH LOCAL FOODS EXPO
To celebrate the project’s achievement of its goal, the task force decided to work with DDS in holding a local foods expo. The goal was to rejoice with DDS, students, farmers, wholesalers, and faculty, and to draw attention to Dartmouth’s achievement. This was a major undertaking for DDS and they really put on a fabulous expo at Homeplate, one of the main participating dining halls, and the one frequented by athletic and “health-conscious” students, who DDS perceives to be a good match for much of the local foods.

With much of it caught on videotape, one’s mouth watered over the venison steaks, poached asparagus, fiddleheads, and sautéed apples with maple liqueur. One student answering another about what he was going to order replied, “A beef steak and a venison steak,” two separate entrees which combined cost over $16, because he couldn’t choose. Students reported coming early for best selection, because they were so excited by this theme meal. After going through the line, Geoff Holman '10 had a tray with fresh mozzarella with spinach, sirloin steak, orzo pasta with shiitake mushrooms and cheese, and fiddleheads. "This is amazing," he said. "It's a great idea to support local farms. Plus it looks delicious." Another student who enjoyed his dinner very much said the local nature of the food mattered to him “not at all”, and suggested laughingly that it may be because he’s from New Jersey. When asked why he thinks it important, another student replied with what may be the most representative comment: “Well, it’s good to support the local farms, but it’s great to get out of our normal routine and get some new foods.”